Beasties

waiting their turn...

Here is a detail, you can see the lovely airiness of the center and the ichy bluchyness of the perimeter.

I knew they were too dense when I applied the gold leaf but I tried to pretend they would work.

I so know better.

Here is a little stack of the new batch of lacy ones. They have also been coated with clay bole which is why they have that beautiful reddish color.

blah

ARRGGG.....I stitched a bunch together and was at about 5 foot diameter but I don't like it.

I have experimented with a number of different methods for the clay bole and gesso. Some have resulted in a denser patty, whereas others are more lacy.

I had already started stitching the lacy ones together, so I added the denser ones to the outside and it is all wrong. It feels to heavy on the perimeter, the airiness of the center is overwhelmed.

I may try laying the whole thing out again with the denser patties at the center and the lacier ones on the outside.

I may also decide the dense ones suck and throw them all away.

I have started several new batches using less layers of a gesso base that is also mixed a little thinner (higher ratio of rabbit skin glue to calcium carbonate). This will give me the lacy effect I want, however I sacrifice a tiny bit of stability in the ground. But I have decided that is a risk I am willing to take for an airier feel.

I am also rethinking the circular format. I liked it when it was smaller. I felt it referenced the drain, but it really falls apart at this size.

I think I will stick with a more traditional rectangular textile format.

This test run has also confirmed what I already knew but didn't want to accept. It must be much bigger. Which means it will take me much longer to complete.

I have always felt it needed to be at least 6'X 8', but I keep hoping it will work smaller.

Clearly it is not gonna.

I collect the hair patties from my shower drain.

I am obsessed with these bits of myself, sloughed off while bathing. I watch them as they are caught in tiny spiraling whirlpools, and then, eventually come to rest over the dome of the drain creating miniature arbitrary weavings.

I find these residual traces endlessly fascinating.

They are delicate. Like lace that my body manufactures in collaboration with gravity and my drain.

These sizable deposits tend to evoke repulsion in most everyone else who encounters them.

For the past two years I have been gilding them; freezing the incidental compositions
beneath layers rabbit skin glue, clay bole and 24 kt gold leaf, and then stitching them together to form a golden tapestry.

my collaborator